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Monday, October 4, 2010

Cataclysm Release Date: December 7th

As every WoW news site and many mainstream news sites are reporting Blizzard has officially announced that the release date of Cataclysm will be December 7th 2010. If you would like to read the official press release you can find it here.

Now the big question is when will 4.01 be released. Many people are guessing this Oct 5th or Oct 12th based upon this postfrom MMO champion. I don't have any inside info on the patches release date, but I would be very surprised if it is released in the next two weeks and I don't expect it until November. Here's why.

I don't trust the Oct 5th and 12th dates. You may remember that MMO champion announced that the target release date for Cataclysm was Nov 2nd. In my opinion, Oct 5th and 12th are likely legacy dates tied to the original targeted release date of Nov 2nd. Since release was bumped a month the patch dates are likely bumped as well, if my guess is correct. Not only that the October dates have been removed from the web site. If they were correct, why remove them? The cat is already out of the bag.

They released a new PTR build of patch 4.0.1 over the weekend. This pretty much guarantees that it won't be on the 5th and in my opinion makes it unlikely that it will be on the 12th. I haven't been on the PTR but the Beta still feels a bit imbalanced. I think there is still quite a bit of work to do before they want the player base as a whole messing around with it.

Prerelease patches put the game into a state of purgatory where nothing really matters. Therefore, Blizzard is unlikely to want that to extend to long. Patch 2.0 was released just over a month before TBCs release. Patch 3.0 was released just under a month before WotLK release. If Patch 4.0 came out in the next two weeks it would be almost 2 months before Cataclysm's release. I think that is highly unlikely to happen.

The WotLK release date was announced on September 15th. At the time everyone thought patch 3.0 would come out before Sept or possibly early October. However, Patch 3.0 came out on Oct 14th almost a month after the release date announcement.

My Conclusion:

I could be wrong, and Blizzard has done unpredictable things in the past. However, at this point I don't see anything really credible that points to an early October patch date for 4.0.1. If I had to guess we will see patch 4.0.1 on Nov 2nd and patch 4.0.3 on Nov 9th or 16th.

15 comments:

While I don't completely disagree with you, one of the differences this time compared to the other expansions is the rebuilding of the old world that EVERYONE will get. This time, we have 2 pre-release patches instead of 1. The first, that would be the normal one we would get from the other 2 xpacs, gives us the changes to the mechanics of the game. Very important for Blizz to "test" and get us used to before the release.. The second is the content change patch. This is the sweeping old world content, etc. changes that everyone will get even if they don't get cataclysm.

I think the idea of giving us a month for 4.0.1 with the mechanics and then a month with 4.0.3 with the questing/zone/content changes makes a lot of sense to me.

I've heard that arguement but I don't buy it, for a couple of reasons.

The first is really the big nasty patch that will break the game as we know it. Getting used to the mechanics is important, but I doubt they want us to get used to them for 2 months.

Second, as major as 4.0.3 is in terms of quanity of content, it is still just a content patch. Content is pretty easily tested in Beta. Blizzard isn't going to learn a whole lot more by having 11 million players running through it.

I also don't think it make sense to release a majority of your expansion content that far ahead of the expansion release.

I disagree with you here. I think that blizzard is trying to placate the masses, and releasing 2 patches within even 2 weeks would seem like a waste. What can possibly be accomplished in that time? If the time was so close, they would just release 4.0.2 and skip the pre-cata patch altogether.

There is also the matter of the pre-release event, which from all indications is taking place within the old world, meaning that once the content patch hits, that event is officially over. That leads me to think that we will have at least a solid month with the pre-cata event, and perhaps a 2 week window between the content patch and cata's release. I think any delay is likely to come out of the content patch's window and not the pre-cata patch.

So, I don't think their primary intent is to have us get used to or test anything, I think their primary intent is to keep us paying by giving us enough not cancel the accounts for a month or two.

Two - in this expansion we have multiple pre-expansion world events to get through.

Three - Im not sure about the ptr but ive found on the beta there is hardly any pvp going on. One of the good pre expansion blues killers is to pvp a bit for fun and they need to know how some very new pvp mechanics will come in to play. (movement while casting, aoe silence(s)) I realise that health is being heavily rebalanced for 85 BUT these mechanics can be tested.

Four - I think ive tried almost all of the new content in the beta. There is SO much more going into this expansion. It is huge. Much bigger then the other two I feel. I simply think they need more pre-release time on the live servers.

The think I find most funny is people keep forgetting about Blizzcon this year. There is no way they are going to deploy the patch on the 19th 3 days before Blizzcon starts with half of the dev team and ALL of the managment team giving demos and presentations. I am guessing that the Tuesday (26th) following Blizzcon will be the 4.01 patch.

I also agree that the patch will kill 80% of the guilds still raiding ICC. It's not just new mechanics but now classes are not tuned to the content. Some classes like Feral druids are so built around Mastery that fully BIS characters can only pull 6k in ICC on Saurfang. Making this go on for 2 months is not something that will give any benifit to anyone.

Plus you assume that more then 2 weeks will be required to go through new low level content? After the sundering I would be shocked if we had longer then 2 weeks before we could get our hands on the expantion.

Oh how much I have always agreed with you, but not like the debate of when we think a patch is coming is anything super signifigant. Although, I feel completely sure that it'll be pre November, and feel confident in the 12th.

A) I mean, they kinda went overhaul in the tone that they said they want people to get used to this system, and everything in it.

B) How they said it would coeincide (sp) with arena season ending.

Either way, I hope I'm wrong really, I'd like a few more weeks to finish drakes for my alts and such, either way, maybe it's about time to really get in tune with our future pre cata rotations / spec for thre remainded of Wrath. I tried filling out my tree at 80, and I'm one point short of getting Improved Shapeshifter ughhh

I don't really think blizzcon is going to have a big affect on when the patch gets released. It's clear from the lineup that they aren't going to be heavily leaning on WoW like previous years. They have SC2 and D3 out in the public eye also and alot of time will go to those games as well.

I could be wrong. But it just seems like this is crunch time, and while many people are going to be at blizzcon, it's only 2 days, and the people working on cataclysm are already most likely working very long hours, that will be a 2 day vacation for some, then back in the office monday.